Nursery / Greenhouse Business

A nursery is a place where plants are propagated and grown to usable size. There are retail
nurseries which sell to the general public, wholesale nurseries which sell only to other
nurseries and to commercial landscape gardeners, and private nurseries which supply the needs
of institutions or private estates. Some retail and wholesale nurseries sell by mail.

Nurseries grow annuals, perennials, and woody plants (trees and shrubs). These have a variety
of uses: decorative plants for flower gardening and landscaping, garden vegetable plants, and
agricultural plants.

Nurseries often grow plants in a greenhouse, a building of glass or in plastic tunnels,
designed to protect young plants from harsh weather (especially frost), while allowing access
to light and ventilation. Modern greenhouses allow automated control of temperature,
ventilation and light and semi-automated watering and feeding. Some also have fold-back roofs
to allow "hardening-off" of plants without the need for manual transfer to outdoor beds.

Some nurseries specialize in one phase of the process: propagation, growing out, or retail
sale; or in one type of plant: groundcovers, shade plants, fruit trees, or rock garden plants.

Nurseries remain highly labour-intensive. Although some processes have been mechanised and
automated, others have not. It remains highly unlikely that all plants treated in the same way
at the same time will arrive at the same condition together, so plant care requires
observation, judgement and manual dexterity; selection for sale requires comparison and
judgement. A UK nurseryman has estimated that manpower accounts for 70% of his production
costs.

Business is highly seasonal, concentrated in spring and autumn. There is no guarantee that
there will be demand for the product - this will be affected by temperature, drought, cheaper
foreign competition, fashion, etc. A nursery carries these risks and fluctuations.

Annuals are sold in trays (undivided containers with multiple plants), flats (trays with
built-in cells), peat pots, or plastic pots. Perennials and woody plants are sold either in
pots or bare-root and in a variety of sizes, from liners to mature trees.

Plants may be propagated by seeds, but often desirable cultivars are propagated asexually by
budding, grafting, layering, or other nursery techniques.

Nurseries have the NAICS (North American Industry Classification
System) code of 111421. The NAICS definition of a nursery is "establishments primarily engaged
in (1) growing nursery products, nursery stock, shrubbery, bulbs, fruit stock, sod, and so
forth, under cover or in open fields and/or (2) growing short rotation woody trees with a
growth and harvest cycle of 10 years or less for pulp or tree stock."